Going for gold!

The Winter Olympics started this week and we wore red and white clothes to school on Friday show our pride. I had choir practice finally this week. And tomorrow is my 100th day of school!

He said

In contrast to my last couple of weeks, this week I was home more than I was at work. I had Wednesday & Thursday off, and then Saturday & Sunday off to boot. It was welcome – mostly because by Wednesday evening after shovelling the driveway for what felt like the better part of half of my adult life, I was now part of the cold club that had been bandied about the daycare kids, Emelia and of course Danielle. I spent a good portion of Thursday napping or just veging out around the house.

Having all the days off was also good because the 2014 edition of the Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia had started on Thursday. The Olympics – the winter version especially – both Danielle and I have always gotten thoroughly wrapped up in. With Emelia having plenty of conversations about them at school we knew this household would lose focus for the next two weeks. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing with all this crappy weather, who wants to leave the house anyway?

Thursday night we had to make a run to the store after Emelia’s Sparks meeting to get her some patriotic duds for Red & White day at school on Friday to show support for Canada in the Olympics since Friday was the day of the opening ceremonies. It seems the summer dress we got Emelia for Canada Day two years ago, in addition to being too small now, was also probably not going to be warm enough for the -25ºC before windchill we’ve been living in. We managed to find her a pretty adorable sweatsuit outfit that will double as warm wear for cool evenings camping in Wolfie this summer.

One of the interesting things that has happened at the mall as a result of the Olympics is they have turned one of the empty spaces into the CBC Canada viewing lounge complete with a large screen TV. With the time zone difference of Sochi, it means the hockey games that I will be doing everything to see, will start in the morning here, so I am happy that there will be a way to take in some of the spectacle at work on my breaks.

Emelia’s report card came home with her on Friday and both Danielle and I were completely impressed by her progress. She’s doing very well in Math, Science, Computers, and of course my favourite Art. Her only area of opportunity is something I travelled with throughout grade school – socializing in class. As Danielle and I were talking about it, my feeling is if that is the only knock against her right now – the girl we worry is painfully shy – I am happy to live with. Plus, considering the fact that more than one of my report cards mused that “John would do so much better if he applied some of the effort he does to entertaining his friends to his school work“, I see her report card as something I could have strived for.

With having all these days off this week bundled together, I got a really good dose of connecting time with both of my girls. But yesterday and today with Danielle still battling the much worse version of the cold than I, I got up with Miss Early Riser both days. But, if I am being truthful I was really doing it with ulterior motives of getting that one-on-one time with Emelia. It’s so interesting to me how much she has changed in the last six months. She is so much more independent, and able to process much bigger concepts. There are times where I have to remind myself she is only seven. While I would love to have the extra hours of sleep, I also know she won’t be this age forever, so I am opting for the tired now quite happily.

Next week has me in from Monday to Friday and then get this, with another weekend off (aside from a meeting I have early Sunday afternoon)! And the best part is, it’s a three day weekend for the entire house because of Family Day on Monday. So three more days to hang out and just be us. Friday night Danielle and I are going to see a movie and be grownups. And then Saturday we have friends coming in town to see a band so we’re potentially going to go our with them for a second grownup night in a row. The rest of the weekend will be focused on spending that time as a family since that what it’s supposed to be for. And since that’s what we try use any weekend for anyway…

She said

This weekend other than the tail end of this brutal cold that the children have lovingly shared with me was pretty perfect. With John’s new job our weekends are very precious, full weekends with little plans are even fewer so we wanted to spend this weekend reconnecting and recharging.

John worked late Friday night and with the cold battling on I took the night off the gym and stayed in for a quiet night at home. We spent the evening watching the opening ceremonies and crashing hard for the night. Saturday morning I enjoyed a much needed although brief sleep-in.

We know there will be a day that we will be complaining that we cannot drag Emelia out of bed but right now I would love if she could even sleep until 7:00 in the week and heck even 7:30 on the weekends. No matter what time she goes to bed she is up really early, and if she is up later than her bedtime she is up even earlier and of course an overtired child is never ideal.

Anyway back to the weekend. I had a bit of a sleep in as we had to still get up and out the door to get Emelia to her 9:30 swim class. Off we went as a family and watched Emelia who has progressed so incredibly well in her swimming. Her strokes and even more importantly her confidence has really blossomed over the last few months. She of course won’t talk to the instructors but she does go in the water with ease and does very well with the new teachers.

After swim we spent a bit of time in the library getting new reader books for Emelia and some CDs for John. Emelia has started to take a bigger interest in reading. She is anxious to move up to chapter books but we still struggle to get her to practice her reading so she can handle the chapter books she wants to read so badly.

After swim it was groceries and then off to get some quick cuts for us. I had intended on just getting a bit of a trim clean-up at the salon we bring Emelia around the corner from our house but shortly after I was looking at pictures of some new styles and then decided to take the plunge for a much bigger change. I took a fair bit off and wanted just something fun and hopefully easy. It’s pretty short for me, a fun summer cut that will hopefully will in some warmer weather and soon. I like the new style, it will take some getting used to how to style it how the stylist did but I think it is the perfect length all around for a big change. Emelia on the other hand is less than impressed with it, she has told me next time I get my hair cut can I get my old cut because she liked it a lot more. She finally told me it was because it was closer to her style and she liked our styles ‘matching’. My mini-me through and through.

The next errand was my highlight. For some time I had been thinking I wanted something to reward myself for the over 75lbs I had lost, to represent the taking back my life, health and body. I have friends who have gotten tattoos to reward themselves, but as much as I have no problem with tattoos and find some to be beautiful pieces of art they are just not for me. So after much thought (because it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t over research something) I decided on a charm bracelet. I had quietly wanted one for quite a while but they are so expensive I convinced myself a 1000 times against them. I am painfully practical. But after all the hard work I wanted to do something for myself.

I also was going back to my own memories as a child, see my mother had a charm bracelet that I just adored and with that and the idea that one day I could start one for Emelia it made the decision for me. Well that and I had a $100 gift card for one of the local malls as a gift from a daycare family this Christmas.

So I mentioned to John that this is what I was going to splurge on myself, I started researching brands and styles, in the middle of that John finally said, can you not get the bracelet for yourself I really had planned on getting you one this year for Valentine’s Day. Well apparently this had been a gift John had been wanting to do for quite some time but with budget limits had never done it.

So we compromised, I would go get the bracelet this weekend, I would use the gift card towards it and my first charm (one I would by as a memory of my mom – a butterfly that represents eternal life) and he for Valentine’s Day would get me another charm to add to the bracelet.

So off we went to White Oaks to the Pandora store, I had researched (I know shocking!) heavily and decided on Pandora that I wanted as my bracelet knowing I could add charms I liked from other various companies I made up my mind. The selection was a bit overwhelming but the saleswoman was amazing and I found the perfect start. So we walked out spending a bit more than I had anticipated but I adore this bracelet. It represents so much to me, I know strange for a piece of silver but it does, it represents my past with mom’s charm, it represents my present and future with my charm from John and the bracelet I bought to reward myself for taking positive charge of my life, my health and myself.

Shopping wasn’t done there, yes John and I the ever so romantic couple we are we bought his Valentine’s Day gift together. John (and me as well) is a huge fan of the Olympics and well anything Canadian so when we found the team Canada sweater left in his size (after a bit of search and rescue) we bought it for him and John walked out with his Valentine’s Day present. Now we normally do not really do much for Valentine’s Day, we don’t buy into the flowers and chocolates of the ‘holiday’. But this year after years of never allowing ourselves to do something extra on this day we made up for it with some pretty fantastic presents.

Needless to say this was an expensive weekend so the next few weeks we are back on track for our New Year’s promise to take our finances in hand but it was pretty fun spoiling each other even if it was only for an afternoon.

That was the weekend, this week will prove to be a busy one, they are calling for more snow, John has some later evenings which means later gym visits for me, but this weekend we have some more time off together and other than a meeting on Sunday we plan on spending as much time together as possible. We have some fun plans just the two of us but will assure we have lots of time also with Emelia and hopefully doing something really fun.